The present invention relates generally to detection of alteration of physical goods, and specifically to automated detection when objects or the like have been altered between inspections.
There are major shortcomings in the traditional brute force approach of continuously monitoring the security of physical entities throughout the various stages of packaging, distribution, and transportation at origination, at intermediate points and times, and at the destination. Because of the amount of inspection and accounting required, manual approaches for continuous monitoring can only be performed properly on a small subset of objects. Of the more than 200,000 vessels and 11.6 million shipping containers passing through U.S. ports during 2000, fewer than 1% were physically inspected.
Current shipping inspection technology is, if exhaustive, invasive and time consuming. For example, 15 person-hours are required to properly inspect an 18-wheel tractor-trailer. Less exhaustive inspections that randomly sample shipping containers allow the potential for unwanted and dangerous cargo to pass. Targeted inspection mechanisms, such as a trained dog detecting drugs or explosives, miss the bigger picture—a narcotic-detecting dog may not be trained to detect all forms of explosives.
Similar situations occur during luggage check-in at airports. Even with recent airport security increases, luggage inspection and passenger screening occurs at random, providing a very low level of security assurance. Current use of invasive physical inspection of luggage and passengers is time consuming, intrusive, and potentially dangerous to screening personnel and nearby passengers. The use of X-rays is error prone and labor intensive.
At the same time, detection of both intentional and accidental alterations to physical goods during packaging, distribution, and transportation has become an ever-increasing concern for a wide-range of entities. This problem is of particular importance when the situation involves potential hazard to human life.
There appear to be no “smart” systems that allow streamlined repeated stationary or en-route inspections. Most conventional inspection systems make only one inspection (at departure for luggage and passengers, at the border for shipping). Furthermore, it appears that no inspection systems provide knowledge, such as travel route of the shipment, that can be trusted.
There appears to be no accepted mechanism to provide authentication for remote, upstream, or lapsed-time inspections. All inspections must be repeated at each port and periodically at the same port, because there appears to be no common way to quickly check for changes since the last inspection. Also, there appear to be no common mechanisms to generate a digital representation or “fingerprint” of a shipping item or person's being, one that can be quickly re-verified during subsequent inspections, thus reducing time consumed for these inspections. Current systems, such as X-ray machines, official inspectors, visible inspections, intrusive physical inspections, and chemical detection units (dogs or machines), provide partial solutions to the problem of security. However, none of these, separately or in combination, can verify the integrity of a objects or physical entities such as goods, shipments, and the like in a timely and non-invasive manner, nor simultaneously meet the needs of such business domains as transportation, manufacturing, packaging, and distribution.
A system is needed that automates the traditional brute force approach of continuously monitoring the security of physical entities throughout the various stages of packaging, distribution, and transportation at origination, at intermediate points, and at the destination. A system is needed that could transfer the burden and the complexity of proving the integrity of a shipment to the origination point of the shipment, while maintaining overall physical security. Further, a system is needed that quickly and non-intrusively allows repeated physical inspection of objects.